There are two methods that can be used to install the fglrx driver in Debian. The first, and recommended way is to use the native Debian packages directly from the non-free repository. The second, which may be required for newly release drivers, is to generate the Debian packages directly from the ATI installer. Both methods are documented here. After the packages are installed, the remaining steps are common, regardless of the install method chosen.

There are two methods that can be used to install the fglrx driver in Debian. The first, and recommended way is to use the native Debian packages directly from the non-free repository. The second, which may be required for newly release drivers, is to generate the Debian packages directly from the ATI installer. Both methods are documented here. After the packages are installed, the remaining steps are common, regardless of the install method chosen.

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=== Method 1: Installing from Debian non-free ===

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doors.txt;10;15

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Note: in <code>lenny</code>, they've renamed <code>fglrx-kernel-src</code> to <code>fglrx-source</code> (but the following worked for me with that substitution).

Revision as of 08:12, 15 September 2009

As of November 2005, ATI's drivers are in the non-free area of Debian. Make sure your /etc/apt/sources.list contains "contrib non-free" as well as main. You will, however, have to build your own kernel modules.

Warning: do not mix the non-free packages with the packages created by the installer as they will conflict in non-obvious ways. Before switching from one method to another, completely remove all fglrx-related packages. Never do upgrade from one method to another directly!

Which install method?

There are two methods that can be used to install the fglrx driver in Debian. The first, and recommended way is to use the native Debian packages directly from the non-free repository. The second, which may be required for newly release drivers, is to generate the Debian packages directly from the ATI installer. Both methods are documented here. After the packages are installed, the remaining steps are common, regardless of the install method chosen.

Download the ATI driver installer

Download the driver packages directly from ATI. You need to download the ATI installer, not the RPM packages for this method to work.

I cannot recommend the latest release ati-driver-installer-8-8-x86.x86_64.run so I down graded to ati-driver-installer-8-7-x86.x86_64.run after many crashes and corrupted screens, so far this version is better for me. still more testing to do

The installer has a script that tries to clone a directory that was removed in this version of the driver. Luckily, it was because the same directory was already located in a different directory. This does add a few extra steps, but this should work for everyone. Once complete, you should proceed to the configuration section.

Compile the kernel driver

Before do this, MAKE SURE you have deleted /usr/src/fglrx-kernel*.deb maybe generated by another installation.
In Debian lenny this is unnecessary - it just compiles and installs the most recent fglrx*.deb package. I would assume this is the case with most up-to-date distributions but to play on the safe side you could remove any leftovers of previous builds.

In Debian Lenny the compiling process might fail. This occurs because Debian downloads another version 1:8-5-1 as opposed to the newest version from ATI 8.501-1 (1/07/2008). This messes up the compiling
process. If you must know this occurs because the command m-a a-i automatically does m-a prepare, get, build, install. If you do m-a prepare, build, install fglr , without get this will not happen and
you can skip the solution below.

Solution: Disable your repositories temporarily just for the compiling bit. Compile the source using module assistant. Then do:

$ aptitude hold fglrx-amdcccle fglrx-driver fglrx-kernel-src

You can do the latter in ncurses by doing the following in order:
type, as root, aptitude and press enter; pres "/" and type fglrx; you will see 3 packages select each with the mouse or using the arrow keys and pres "=" or alternatively press package from the menu and select hold.
Finally enable your repositories once again.

and confirm that 'ldd /usr/bin/fglrxinfo' is pointing to the right one.

People seem to be experiencing a broken libGL.so.1 after installing 8.41 on Debian/etch. If `amdcccle` complains that libGL.so.1 does't exist, DONT DELETE /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 LIKE IT SAYS ABOVE. Make symbolic link to libGL.so.1.2 (which is included in fglrx package - 14 megs in size):